Vive L'Amour (1994)

AKA 愛情萬歲 (Aiqing wansui)

Directed by
Ming-liang Tsai

Writing credits
Ming-liang Tsai        
Yi-chun Tsai        
Pi-ying Yang

Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a young salesman, discovers a key to an apartment in its lock and takes it. He soon moves into one of the bedrooms, and one night he attempts to commit suicide by slitting his wrists while lying on the bed.

Meanwhile, Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung) is drinking coffee at a cafe when a beautiful real estate agent, May Lin (Yang Kuei-Mei), sits at the table next to his. Intrigued, he follows her as she walks down the street. Lin catches on and eventually joins him. She leads him to a vacant apartment that she is trying to sell — the same apartment that Hsiao-kang is staying in — and they have sex in one of the bedrooms. Hsiao-kang hears them and stops the bleeding from his wrists.

Ah-jung steals the key to the apartment from Lin and later returns with his belongings. He moves into one of the adjoining bedrooms. That night, he and Hsiao-kang encounter each other in the apartment and have a short argument.

May Lin spends her day trying to sell property. While taking a break, she returns to the apartment when Hsiao-kang and Ah-jung are both there. The two sneak out quietly together and soon form a friendship.

One night, Hsiao-kang goes out for a walk and meets Ah-jung selling dresses on the street. May Lin walks past but does not notice them. Soon, Ah-jung joins her at a food stand and the two return to the apartment and sleep together in the same room as they did the first time. Unbeknownst to them, Hsiao-kang is hiding under the bed as they arrive, and he masturbates as the bed creaks above him.

The next morning, May Lin gets dressed and leaves. Hsiao-kang lies next to the sleeping Ah-jung and kisses him before slowly pulling away. Lin goes to her car but cannot start it and instead walks on a pathway near some construction sites. She then sits down on a bench and starts to cry uncontrollably.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109066/

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

AKA Τοπίο στην ομίχλη (Topio stin omichli)

Directed by
Theodoros Angelopoulos        

Writing credits
Theodoros Angelopoulos
Tonino Guerra        
Thanassis Valtinos

The movie portrays the journey of two children in search of their father who they believe lives in Germany. On the way they meet many people- including a troupe of actors, and encounter dangers. Eventually they cross a river to reach their hoped for destination.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096288/

Visitor Q (2001)

AKA ビジターＱ, Bijitā Kyū

Directed by
Takashi Miike

Written by
Itaru Era

The film's plot is often compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, in which a strange visitor to a wealthy family seduces the maid, the son, the mother, the daughter, and finally the father, before leaving a few days after, subsequently changing their lives.

The film starts off with a question: "Have you ever done it with your Dad?"; the viewer then sees Miki Yamazaki, a young prostitute, trying to persuade her father, Kiyoshi, into having sex with her. Her father is videotaping the scene for a documentary he is preparing on Japanese youths. Once it appears the father is letting himself be persuaded, she tells him the price (50,000 Yen). They have sex, the father ejaculates after a very short time and the disappointed daughter informs him it will be 100,000 Yen now, because of this. The father then realizes the camera has been on all along.

In the next scene, called "Have you ever been hit on the head?", a man (the visitor) hits the father over the head with a rock for no apparent reason.

The film then moves on to a scene titled "Have you ever hit your mom?" In this scene, the mother is working on a jigsaw puzzle, and her hands are shown to have red marks, showing where she was beaten. Her young son, Takuya, comes in and starts throwing things at the already broken apartment walls because he is unhappy with the toothbrush his mother bought him. He then hits his mother with a rug beating stick. Later, bullies from the son's school come to the front of the house and shoot fireworks through the son's bedroom window. The mother is later seen injecting heroin. It does not seem to have a huge effect on her, though, suggesting she is a regular user.

On his way back from work, the father is yet again hit on the head by the same man. They both arrive at the father's home and the mother serves them dinner. The son comes down while they are eating and starts beating the mother again. This does not surprise or bother the father, or the visitor. Later, the father is seen watching one of his old tapes, and it turns out that he was raped by a group of teenagers.

The next day, the father is on his way to work when he sees his son being beaten and robbed by some children from school. He films it from a distance and appears very pleased with the footage.

The mother, meanwhile, is getting ready for work. The viewer discovers her body is covered in marks from where the son has hurt her. She also has a limp.

The father meets with a female co-worker who believes he is going too far in his work. The mother, working as a prostitute, is whipping a customer with a belt (at his request). She then goes to buy some drugs.

When she gets home, she discovers the pieces from her jigsaw have been arranged so as to form a trail through the house and ending at a photograph of her daughter. The visitor is at home and he introduces her to lactation sex (squeezing her nipples to make her lactate, a recurring theme in this film). The son sees this while hiding behind the door.

At dinner, the mother is much happier than usual, and has prepared a nice meal. The son, however, is sullen and throws a bowl of hot soup at her face. The wife—instead of being downtrodden, as usual—comes back with a carving knife and throws it at the head of her son, who dodges just in time. Everyone is very pleased, except the son. However, the father becomes exhilarated when the schoolchildren start attacking his house with fireworks again, which he videotapes. Meanwhile, the mother and the visitor continue to eat peacefully.

Next day, the son is bullied again. The father is taping his son from his car with the visitor and his female co-worker. The co-worker gets fed up with the father and tries to leave. The father follows her on foot and sexually assaults her while the visitor, emotionally neutral, tapes the scene. The father unintentionally chokes his victim to death.

He takes her body back home and puts her in the greenhouse. The visitor is still taping, at the father's instruction. The father sends the visitor to get garbage bags from the mother. But when the visitor asks her for them she takes her clothes off and reveals she is dressed in a garbage bag. She then makes herself lactate and produces a rain of human milk that covers the floor while the visitor watches from underneath an umbrella.

During this time, the husband is drawing on the woman’s body to mark the best places to cut it up so the smaller pieces will fit in the bags. He tapes this for his documentary. Becoming aroused, the father has sex with the dead body. He then notices she is getting wet and is amazed that this is possible for a dead woman. When he brings his hand up, however, it is covered in feces. He then discovers that his penis is stuck inside the corpse due to Rigor mortis. The mother comes out to help and rushes to the shop to buy lots of oils and vinegar. She empties the bottles into the bath with her husband and the corpse. This does not help, though, so she gives him a shot of heroin, which frees him. They are both exhilarated.

The visitor has filmed the whole scene.

Later on, the couple is having fun dismembering the female co-worker's corpse when the son turns up in the front yard with the same children beating him. The parents rush out and with great pleasure they finally kill all the bullies using the axes and knives they were using to cut the co-worker's body to pieces. Later, their son is shown lying on the floor in the puddle of maternal milk. He thanks the visitor for the chaos he brought to their family which helped them become closer than ever.

The visitor leaves the family. Afterwards, finding the prostitute daughter on the street, he hits her in the face with a rock. Beaten and bleeding, she comes back home to the family and finds the father suckling on the mother's breast in the garden. The final shot of the movie is of the daughter suckling on her mother's other breast, symbolizing the return of family order. All scars on the mother have disappeared, as have those on the daughter, shown seconds before (caused by being hit with the rock), suggesting a symbolically healed family.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290329/

Caligula (1979)

AKA Caligola

Directed by
Tinto Brass

Writing credits
Gore Vidal

Caligula (Malcolm McDowell), the young heir to the throne of the syphilis-ridden, half-mad Emperor Tiberius (Peter O'Toole), thinks he has received a bad omen after a blackbird flies into his room early one morning. Shortly afterward, Macro (Guido Mannari), the head of the Praetorian Guards, appears to tell the young man that his great uncle (Tiberius) demands that he report at once to the Island of Capri, where he has been residing for a number of years with close friend Nerva (John Gielgud), Claudius (Giancaro Badessi), a dim-witted relative, and Caligula's younger stepbrother, Gemellus (Bruno Brive), Tiberius' favorite. Fearing assassination, Caligula is afraid to leave, but his beloved sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) convinces him to go.

At Capri, Caligula finds his uncle has become depraved, showing signs of advanced venereal diseases, and embittered with Rome and politics. Tiberius enjoys watching degrading sexual shows, often including children and various freaks of nature. Caligula observes with a mixture of fascination and horror. Tensions rise when Tiberius jokingly tries to poison Caligula in front of Gemellus. After Nerva commits suicide on the prospect of Caligula's rule, Tiberius collapses from a stroke, leaving Macro and Caligula planning a way to hasten the latter's ascent to the throne.

Late one night, Macro escorts all the spectators out of Tiberius' bedchamber to allow Caligula the opportunity to murder his uncle, but when he fails, Macro finishes the deed himself by strangling Tiberius with a scarf. Caligula triumphantly removes the imperial signet from Tiberius' finger and suddenly realizes that Gemellus has witnessed the murder. Tiberius is buried with honours and Caligula is proclaimed the new Emperor, who in turn proclaims Drusilla his equal, to the apparent disgust of the senate. Afterwards, Drusilla, fearful of Macro's influence, convinces Caligula to get rid of him. Caligula obliges by setting up a mock trial, in which Gemellus is intimidated into testifying that Macro alone murdered Tiberius. With the powerful Macro gone, Caligula appoints Tiberius's former adviser Longinus (John Steiner) as his right-hand man, and pronounces the docile Senator Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli) as the new head of the Praetorian Guard. Drusilla endeavours to find Caligula a wife amongst the priestesses of the goddess Isis, the mystery cult they secretly practice. Caligula only wants to marry Drusilla, but when she refuses because she is actually his sister, he spitefully marries Caesonia (Helen Mirren), a known courtesan, but only after she bears him an heir.

Caligula proves to be a popular, yet eccentric ruler, cutting taxes and overturning all the oppressive laws that Tiberius enacted. The senate begins to dislike the young emperor for his eccentricities and various insults directed towards them. Darker aspects of his personality begin to emerge as well; he rapes a bride and groom on their wedding day because of a minor fit of jealousy and orders the execution of Gemellus merely to provoke a reaction from Drusilla.

After he discovers Caesonia is pregnant, Caligula suffers severe fever, but Drusilla nurses him back to health. Right after he fully recovers, Caesonia bears Caligula a daughter, Julia Drusilla, and Caligula marries her on the spot. During the celebration, Drusilla collapses in Caligula's arms from the same fever he'd suffered. Soon afterwards, Caligula receives another ill omen in the guise of a black bird. He rushes to Drusilla's side and watches her die. Caligula experiences a nervous breakdown, he smashes a statue of Isis and drags Drusilla's body around the palace while screaming hysterically. Now in a deep depression, Caligula walks the Roman streets, disguised as a beggar. After a brief stay in a city jail, Caligula becomes determined to destroy the senatorial class, which he has come to loathe. His reign becomes a series of humiliations against the foundations of Rome; senators' wives are forced to work in the service of the state as prostitutes, estates are confiscated, the old religion is desecrated, and he initiates an absurd war on Britain to humiliate the army. It is obvious to the senators and the military that Caligula must be assassinated, and Longinus conspires with Chaerea to carry out the deed.

Caligula wanders into his bedroom where a nervous Caesonia awaits him. The blackbird makes a final appearance, but only Caesonia is frightened of it. The next morning, after rehearsing an Egyptian play, Caligula and his family are attacked as they leave the stadium in a coup headed by Chaerea. His wife and daughter are brutally murdered and Chaerea himself stabs Caligula in the stomach, to which he defiantly whimpers "I live!"

As Caligula and his family's bodies are thrown down the marble steps and their blood is washed off the marble floor, Claudius is proclaimed the new Emperor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/

Begotten (1990)

Directed by
E. Elias Merhige

Written by
E. Elias Merhige

The story opens with a robed, profusely bleeding "God" disemboweling himself, with the act ultimately ending in his death. A woman, Mother Earth, emerges from his remains, arouses the body, and impregnates herself with his semen. Becoming pregnant, she wanders off into a vast and barren landscape. The pregnancy manifests in a fully grown convulsing man whom she leaves to his own devices. The "Son of Earth" meets a group of faceless nomads who seize him with what is either a very long umbilical cord or a rope. The Son of Earth vomits organic pieces, and the nomads excitedly accept these as gifts. The nomads finally bring the man to a fire and burn him. "Mother Earth" encounters the resurrected man and comforts him. She seizes the man with a similar umbilical cord. The nomads appear and proceed to rape her. Son of Earth is left to mourn over the lifeless body. A group of characters appears, carry her off and dismember her, later returning for Son of Earth. After he, too, is dismembered, the group buries the remains, planting the parts into the crust of the earth. The burial site becomes lush with flowers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/

Gummo (1997)

Directed by
Harmony Korine

Written by
Harmony Korine

 

The film is set in Xenia, Ohio, a small town hit by a tornado in 1974, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee. The film portrays Xenia as the home of various oddball and somewhat disturbing backwater characters. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other denizens of the town.

The film opens with a grainy voiced narrator recounting the events of the tornado while disturbing home-movie images play — mostly of the town's people. Following the narration, the credits roll over a montage of an adolescent boy, known as Bunny Boy, wearing only pink bunny ears, shorts and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.

The next scene opens with a cat being carried by the scruff of its neck by a teenage boy. He drowns the cat in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with the same boy Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts.

Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. The narrator introduces Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. His friend Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a house cat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent.

The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon, who are hunting feral cats. They bring the cats to a local grocer, who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant, and the grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. They then buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.

The film then cuts to a scene in which two young boys dressed as cowboys curse and destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap guns. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave him sprawled on the ground.

Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic and attached to life support machinery. The poacher Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting." Tummler's original intention was to hurt the poacher for killing the cats that they were killing for profit but he was not home. He then discovers the grandmother laying in her bed, opines that it is, "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.

A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Harmony Korine) flirting with a gay dwarf; a man pimping his Down Syndrome afflicted sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering a child molester; a pair of twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in brown water; a drunken party with arm- and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. A number of even smaller scenes depicting satanic rituals, racist conversations, and some disturbing hygiene round out the film.

The final scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older brother would sing (the brother eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. The film ends with Bunny Boy running towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he displays prominently.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119237/

The Piano Teacher (2001)

AKA La pianiste


Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke
Elfriede Jelinek (novel)

Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although already in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot); her father is a long-standing resident in a lunatic asylum.

The audience is gradually shown truths about Erika's private life. Behind her assured façade, she is a woman whose sexual repression verges into full-fledged desperation and is manifested in a long list of paraphilias, including (but by no means limited to) voyeurism and sadomasochistic fetishes such as sexual self-mutilation.

When Erika meets Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), a charming 17-year-old engineering student from a bourgeois background, a mutual obsession develops. Even though she initially attempts to prevent consistent contact and even tries to undermine his application to the conservatory, he eventually becomes her pupil. Like her, he appreciates and is a gifted interpreter of Schumann and Schubert.

Erika destroys the musical prospects of an insecure but talented girl, Anna Schober, driven by her jealousy of the girl's contact with Walter — and also, perhaps, by her fears that Anna's life will mirror her own. She does so by hiding shards of glass inside one of Anna's coat pockets, damaging her right hand and ruining her aspirations to play at the forthcoming jubilee concert. Erika then pretends to be sympathetic when the girl's mother (Susanne Lothar) asks for advice on her daughter's recuperation. (The sub-plot of the pupil and her mother, mirroring the main relationship in the film, is absent in Jelinek's novel.) In a moment of dramatic irony, the girl's mother rhetorically asks Erika who could do something so evil.

Walter is increasingly insistent in his desire to start a relationship with Erika, but when she finally acquiesces, he is unwilling to indulge her violent fantasies, which repulse him. The film climaxes, however, when he attacks her in her apartment in the fashion she let him know she desired, beating and then raping her. She discovers that the reality of her desires does not match her conception of them.

Erika takes a kitchen knife to a concert in which she is supposed to fill in for the injured Anna. She meets Anna and Anna's mother, and Walter, in the foyer of the concert hall. Minutes before the concert is due to start, Erika stabs herself in the shoulder and leaves the foyer. Her onscreen injury is not especially severe, but the implication is that further self-harm will ensue.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254686/